Since Robert Frost encouraged our founder Marie Bullock to “get poetry into the high schools” in the 1960s, we’ve been assisting teachers in bringing poetry into the classroom. Here, you’ll find poetry lesson plans, poems for kids and for teens, essays about teaching, a calendar of teaching resources for the school year, a glossary of poetry terms, and more. Our lesson plans, most of which are aligned with the Common Core, have been reviewed by our Educator in Residence with an eye toward developing skills of perception and imagination.
Read more about Teach This Poem’s impact.
Teach this Poem: The Classics
Lesson Plans for the New Year
Browse these lesson plans featuring poems about New Year's and beginnings.
Holidays: Poems for Kids
Lesson Plans by Theme
Find poetry lesson plans organized by theme, occasion, and class subject, including lesson plans featuring poems about social justice, the environment, and many other topics.
Winter: Poems for Kids
Poems for Chanukah
Meaning “dedication” in Hebrew, Chanukah celebrates the ancient victory of a band of Jewish rebels against the occupying forces who had outlawed Judaism and profaned the Temple in Jerusalem with Greek idols. The earliest version of the story was written in verse, in the biblical poetry of the Books of Maccabees.
Eighteenth-century Scottish poet 